SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.
Having kept a list of dangers living sick in the back of my throat, having numbered the entrances & exigencies,
having taken note of the exits at both ends of the plane knowing one is always behind me, having kept to myself secrets, hands, a series
of descriptions that involve the word blood, having up-buttoned the blouse & up-stitched the hem, having whittled a half-inch off each
pair of heels, having walked only outside of alleyways & under streetlamps, having learned by fistblow, by bladetooth, having found myself
inside & safe & asking my door’s lock if safety is a myth I have locked myself into believing in order to step from my bed, having slid from the bed & onto my knees
& there offered the blank called God both gratitude & supplication, having wondered if there can be gratitude without supplication, having nonetheless given thanks
for storm clouds, sugar packets, dust mites & silence, having prayed that the war is ending, having prayed that the war has not yet begun, having lost teeth &
the concept of virginity, having called the absence God & God an absence, having raw-picked the scab, having stone-packed my pockets before walking
out of the river, having thanked the night for hiding the dumb wasted furniture of what I call a life, having given my best plans & laid down in the rain, having noticed
in the oil an iridescence spectacular, having held a winged insect in my hand & seen on its wings the same shimmer & sheen before it asked its wings to fly
again & I stood watching, having after all this no choice but to stay here, to stand & to marvel, to see & to see.
Emma Bolden is the author of House Is an Enigma (Southeast Missouri State UP), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press), and Maleficae (GenPop Press). The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, she serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly and an Editor of Screen Door Review. Her memoir, The Tiger and the Cage, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in 2022.
